Nano-fabrication includes the fabrication of very small structures that have features on the order of 100 nanometers or smaller. One application in which nano-fabrication has had a sizeable impact is in the processing of integrated circuits. The semiconductor processing industry continues to strive for larger production yields while increasing the circuits per unit area formed on a substrate; therefore nano-fabrication becomes increasingly important. Nano-fabrication provides greater process control while allowing continued reduction of the minimum feature dimensions of the structures formed.
An exemplary nano-fabrication technique in use today is commonly referred to as nanoimprint lithography. Nanoimprint lithography is useful in a variety of applications including, for example, fabricating layers of integrated devices such as CMOS logic, microprocessors, NAND Flash memory, NOR Flash memory, DRAM memory, or other memory devices such as MRAM, 3D cross-point memory, Re-RAM, Fe-RAM, STT-RAM, and the like. Unlike other lithographic processes that rely on projection optics, such as e.g. i-line, DUV, ArF, ArF immersion, etc., nanoimprint lithography applies a pattern to a substrate by filling the relief images provided on an imprint template (or mask) with a formable resist material and then converting the material into a solid, for example, by applying UV light to a UV-curable form of resist material. This method has the advantage of enabling superior resolution relative to the other lithographic methods because the final pattern is no longer dependent on the wavelength of the light source and the aerial image projected onto the resist material. After solidification, the template is separated from the solidified patterned resist material. Template separation itself, however, can be a source of pattern defects that are generally referred to as separation defects. These can take the form of, for example, collapsed features or features that are torn away from the substrate. As a result, there continues to be a need for systems and methods that minimize sources of separation defects in nanoimprint lithography processes.